AdolfOliverPanties:borg: I'm in San Francisco and not one radio or TV station is reporting this so I'm guessing it's not a big deal.

Tanker was empty and hull was not pierced. Could have been a LOT worse.

9/11 could have been a lot worse if "they" had nuclear bombsbe really I only saw a small news scroll on CBS-5 so far it's obviously a nothing story nobody is breaking in regular programing to over it. This is a market that breaks in for the smallest crap.

You mean like a few years ago when there actually was a spill in the bay?

Cosco Busan.

Remember now, that the Bay Bridge sits on piers that are only about 2300 feet apart. It's very difficult to thread between these, as there is only about fifth of a mile of clearance to work with on both sides of the ship.

Sid_6.7:Yeah, but at a given speed, it probably would have been a lot worse if the tanker had all the extra weight from the oil.

I don't think so. The fenders are designed to take a full on hit by large ships at normal bay traffic speeds so the bridge wasn't in any real danger. With a double hulled ship the odds of a major spill are very low short of breaking the keel in two.The last bay spill was by a single hulled tanker that had a similar accident.

studebaker hoch:Remember now, that the Bay Bridge sits on piers that are only about 2300 feet apart. It's very difficult to thread between these, as there is only about fifth of a mile of clearance to work with on both sides of the ship.

I think that is the larger point people are overlooking here. It's amazing that crew managed to squeeze that ship between those piers at all, much less with only minor damage.